Cycling UK Forum

snibgo wrote:Ah, okay, yes, (reported) casualties and accidents (that give rise to insurance claims) are different things. And fatals (of any type of road user) is a very small proportion of all accidents.

If it helps, the 2006 reported casualties were:

Pedestrians
.. Killed 675
.. KSI 7,051
.. All severities 30,982
Pedal cyclists
.. Killed 146
.. KSI 2,442
.. All severities 16,196
All road users
.. Killed 3,172
.. KSI 31,845
.. All severities 258,404

(From DfT RRCGB2010, 30010.xls)

How many of those cyclists killed met their end while wheeling their Bike on the footpath?

I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics show its safer to wheel a bicycle on the footpath than ride it on the road.

Vorpal wrote: ... I didn't use the word 'casualties' on purpose. I did a little searching on the internet and didn't find many statistics; ....

If the police (transport ministry) statistics ever included "non injury" accidents, it was well before my time. This is why, when a discussion includes all collisions, I talk about meassuring the amount of debris on the road. However, once upon a time, around here at least, to police attended all collisions immediately when they were reported and a prosecution for 'due care' nearly always ensued. I'd say the attitude of senior officers signing up, was that a driver whose vehicle collided with something like a pedestrian, stationary a stationary object, or with a moving vehicle whose driver had priority, must have been careless. A bit of evidence to support what I'm saying is the collapse, in recent years of the level of due care prosecutions. When the fixed penalty system was extended to careless driving a couple of years ago, the government justified it on the basis of the reduction in prosecutions; some people may remember that at the time, when the media were looking round for a story, passing a cyclist too closely was one of the few suggestions they could come up with.

While it should be the case that a driver colliding with a pedestrian will always have been in the stats, I'm saying that the attitude of the police service to collisions as completely changed in the last three decades. While improved forensic techniques are often used in fatal or potenyially fatal cases, the majority of the rest are treated as part of life's tapestry. Vulnerable road users lose out both ways. They are exposed to more careless driving, and since they are inevitably the most likely to be in KSI collisions, they are seen as the problem, rather than its victims.

The DoT could not for the life of them, keep a half accurate statistic on 'non injury' collision incidents, let alone 'near misses'.

If it were possible to collate a database on 'near misses' between motor vehicles and cyclists, by observing CCTV footage, that would be the preverbial 'job for life' and I would apply for the post tomorrow.

There was some discussion further up this thread about why official attitudes appear to have changed on the legality of wheeling a pedal cycle on a footway.

It has only just dawned on me that s 72 of the Highways Act, 1835 applies throughout the UK (according to the online version of the Act.) The Roads (Scotland) Act, also prohibits pavement cycling but has an exception for wheeling a pedal cycle. The Cycle Tracks Act also dates from 1984. Apart from the obvious point that wheeling is OK in Scotland, it suggests to me that that there was an intention at the ministry of transport to alter this bit of law in E&W as well during a session of legal titying up but for whatever reason, it never happened. If that was some sort of mistake or oversight, there would never have been the opportunity or the motivation to rectify it afterwards.